Reading the news is the new smoking

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/reading-the-news-is-the-new-smoking

by wesleyd • 26 days ago

58 59 26 days ago

I Agree with a lot of what this article says, except it doesn't provide a better solution for being informed. Seems to suggest ingornance is bliss.

drunkboxer• 26 days ago

I don't know about you but Know Nothing November has been going extremely well for me this year.

naitgacem• 26 days ago

Exactly my thoughts. I thought it was going to suggest something better, but it was really just suggesting ignorance is bliss.

pluralmonad• 26 days ago

The entire point is that being "informed" is of negative value. Trying to find a different avenue through which to be informed defeats the purpose. Ask your friends and family how they are doing and you will be much better informed than listening to the ravings of publicists.

OutOfHere• 26 days ago

It is nonsense, considering that such uninformed people end up voting for a felon in public office.

worldthruword• 26 days ago

I think news apps like Groundnews can provide a summary news service so that people aren't afraid of missing things. Breaking news is generally premature, only after a particular amount of time has passed, do we get a better picture.

uludag• 26 days ago

But at some point you really have to accept ignorance. Like, there are countless stories that anyone could read and be outraged about. I think it makes sense to determine the areas that you can make a difference and be informed regarding those to the extend that it helps you making informed decisions.

ViktorRay• 26 days ago

Why not just read the news once a week?

I remember back many years ago I would only think about politics and all that when I read The Economist once every few days. Or I would read NewsWeek once a week.

Aside from that I wouldn’t think about the news at all.

Nowadays with smartphones the constant bombardment of news….thats what the new smoking. Not the news in of itself.

Actually if you look at the negative cognitive effects of constant news reading….I would say that reading the news is the new drinking rather than the new smoking.

ClarityJones• 26 days ago

The purpose of "the news" is to confuse and delude. There's an argument to be made for less-frequent use, but staying away on Mon - Fri doesn't do much good if you open a paper on Sunday morning and believe what you're being told.

frankie_t• 26 days ago

I quit news from around 2015 to around 2019 and it was the best period of my life in terms of productivity, clarity of mind. Of course, other things also were a factor, like I routinely would go offline for days or even weeks, only using my computer. Covid broke me because it was so captivating to read about a thing that will directly affect me. It even felt mildly intellectual in the moment, all the analytics and prognoses. And now with the war raging in my country (Ukraine) my system is completely broken. Going offline for long periods of time is not much of an option anymore, and keeping out of smartphone by sheer willpower doesn't really work.

mschuster912• 26 days ago

And now with the war raging in my country (Ukraine) my system is completely broken.

Stay safe, and I wish you all the luck I can that you all manage to drive out the Russian invaders.

Aromasin3• 26 days ago

In the same vein as this article, the best thing I've ever done might just be leaving my phone by the front door when I get home, and getting rid of our TV. All I do is read books, paint, fix-up the house, tend to the garden, play boardgames, and generally do things that require me to be present when at home with my wife and child, rather than in someone else's version of the world.

We go stir crazy at home now, a sensation I have forgotten since my childhood, and feel almost obliged to go out to do things lest we go crazy from boredom. It's wonderful, and I can't recommend it enough.

GlibMonkeyDeath• 26 days ago

All I do is read books, paint, fix-up the house, tend to the garden, play boardgames, and generally do things that require me to be present when at home with my wife and child, rather than in someone else's version of the world

And post on HN? :)

Aromasin3• 26 days ago

What else am I to do when waiting for my chip simulations to run? Be present with my colleagues? There are limits.

dadkins2• 26 days ago

I'm of two minds about this. Facebook and Instagram keep me connected with friends, new and old. True, they're filled with algorithmic crap now, but when I tried ditching them for a while, it didn't improve my connections with people. If anything, I lost touch with people because that's where they were. I'm much better off knowing what my friends -- many who have scattered -- are up to, and giving casual updates myself.

On the other hand, yes, absolutely put the phone down at the dinner table and engage with those who are present. No questions there.

Finally, my kids are getting to the age where their friends have phones and use them to communicate. My kids don't yet have that and are reliant on me to text parents, which is a lot of friction for everyone involved. Their summer is very boring because they hardly get to see their friends. So, sure, fight boredom by entertaining yourself, but that's a lonely existence.

Aromasin3• 26 days ago

Note that by leaving them by the front door I don't mean abstain. I relent that it is necessary for communication now we don't use letters or have landlines, but I need to actively walk to the front door if I wish to do that. Notifications are something I check when I leave the house in the morning, or briefly after the gym in the car perhaps, rather than being all I do for the majority of the time I sit in the house. The act of it being at the entrance and allowed no further is enough.

benwerd• 26 days ago

Oof, this was a tough read for me.

For example, he mentions reading about genocide and not doing anything about it. In a democratic state the thing you do about it - aside from giving money to NGOs and other groups who are actually helping on the ground, protesting, sending letters to politicians and editors, boycotting businesses that align themselves with it - is to vote against the people who enable it. If you do nothing about genocide, you don't care about genocide. You always have levers to pull. Our role in a democracy is not to be a passive consumer; we have to use our votes, our voices, and apply pressure about the things we care about.

The idea that the news doesn't tell you about the historical context of a particular event is also an important tell. That's a pretty good indication that you're reading the wrong news, not that news as a whole is bad. There is plenty of really good, smart, long-form, deeply reported, contextually revealing journalism out there. I agree that there's a lot of news that doesn't fit that description. But it's out there.

But most importantly, this is a barometer of how people are actually feeling. The news industry is doing a terrible job of meeting people where they're actually at.

Part of the problem is that we are genuinely in a tough spot in history: rising authoritarianism, climate change, oligarchy, and many other factors are joining together to squeeze the most vulnerable communities. I don't know that looking away is the right thing to do, but the fire alarm analogy is almost good: it's true that if you're subjected to continuous peril you'll stop paying attention, but the peril is real and not akin to a broken alarm.

Perhaps what we need is a newsroom that only takes a step back and reports on the underlying trends, removing a dependence on the individual stories of today. For example, we should be worrying a lot more about the integrity of midterm elections here in the US, but the individual stories get lost in the mix.

da-x• 26 days ago

For the majority of people, it seems to me that news are background noise to which they tune in occasionally, but otherwise they are just going about in their lives and it does not affect them much.

However, for the few details-oriented analytic people among us, the news are a *mental pit hole*. This is what I saw on myself since 2020. The mind works under an illusion that there is a possibly to synthesize some positive a change in your personal life based on information from the news - but it's wrong. It didn't keep me from browsing though, and getting addicted to those information streams, just like sugar.

So occasionally I do a 'news detox' like the OP describes.

Surely social developments can affect you and your neighborhood, your city, or your country on the long term, but in that case it is better to consume a monthly or yearly digest.

Or a daily digest. I vibe-coded a daemon that sends me the Wikipedia's daily summaries, once a day. It's a one page of 'this is what happened' without interpretation (but with left-leaning bias, because Wikipedia).

esseph• 26 days ago

I got to this and laughed.

I know SO many people that feel the exact opposite way about Wikipedia

but with left-leaning bias, because Wikipedia).

mschuster912• 26 days ago

Or a daily digest. I vibe-coded a daemon that sends me the Wikipedia's daily summaries, once a day. It's a one page of 'this is what happened' without interpretation (but with left-leaning bias, because Wikipedia).

Well, the core problem is that conservatism (or rather, what most conservative parties make it out to be) doesn't exactly correspond with reality - particularly where stuff such as climate change is concerned.

none2585• 26 days ago

I was exactly like this and did exactly the same thing in 2024 and it has been a great weight lifted off of me. I allow news about stuff reported here, Polygon, or my local small-town paper but nothing like NYT (of which I used to read daily).

The biggest criticism I've received is that I am in a privileged position and so I can afford to do so. I think this is probably true but my mental health isn't worth the alternative.

uslic001• 26 days ago

I quit all news shows since before 2000. I quit all TV for over a year now. Robert Heinlein knew this in the 1960's.

"Remind me... to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers."— Stranger in a Strange Land

memcg• 26 days ago

John Prine sang the Spanish Pipedream chorus in the 70s: Blow up your TV, throw away your paper Go to the country, build you a home Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches Try and find Jesus on your own

jeffreportmill1• 26 days ago

Smoking is not the best metaphor, because staying informed on the issues and events of society and community is essential to a well lived life. News in some form is more like food - and the author makes a good point that too many of us are suffering adverse health effects of consuming vast quantities of poor quality content, myself included.

Our society is under attack and changing rapidly in dangerous ways. Staying informed might not be the same as enlisting and heading overseas to fight the good fight, but we owe our current pax americana to those who did. So I stay informed so I can occasionally enter the fray in our contest of ideas. The worst of what is happening now is because too many people are under and ill-informed.

bryanlarsen• 26 days ago

Local news is pretty much dead, approximately nobody is reading local newspapers or watching the local news at 6.

The only news that's still viable / widely consumed are national and international news, and they generally don't cover crime less severe than mass murder.

So I suggest that the main evidence in the article, the disconnect between crime perception and reality is not caused by news consumption. People were more aware of local murders, muggings etc in the past when local media was a regular part of people's lives.

IMO it's caused by social media consumption.

jfengel• 26 days ago

At least nobody thinks smoking is good for you.

From the 50s to the mid 90s, people saw the news as a dull obligation. You watched the news because it was important, to be a good citizen.

Then came the Iraq War, and CNN made that duty a 24 hour operation. When the war ended, they had to keep filling up a 24 hour news cycle even though it was no longer a crisis. So they found ways to make the news fun, especially when Fox News realized that it was fun to be angry all the time.

There's still this lingering idea that you're a better person for watching the news, but it has long since ceased to be true. At most, you need the 12 daily minute news segment (before the sports, weather, lifestyle, and "here's a bunny on a surfboard" closer). You don't even need that much, but it's a hell of a lot better than a drug with an unlimited supply.

SirFatty• 26 days ago

It's not the news that's the problem, but the news providers. The way things are presented, the frequency which the news is presented are designed to mess with your emotions.

For me, removing myself from Facebook (2010) and Twitter (2023) was the best thing I have ever done for my mental health.

brycewray• 26 days ago

(2022)

(... which explains, among other things, the multiple references to a singular Trump presidency)

dsmurrell• 26 days ago

When I'm not following the latest conversation topics, I have no shame in telling people that I only read hacker news.

afavour5• 26 days ago

This feels dangerous. Being obsessed with reading the news, watching endless cable news, getting steams of push notifications… yeah, unhealthy.

But completely ignorance of what’s going on in the world is not something to be lauded. It’s how we’ve ended up in the situation we find ourselves in today, a fact free environment where politicians get away with murder (sometimes literally!) because so many people aren’t paying attention.

Equating reading the news is smoking feels completely incorrect on a number of levels.

HPsquared• 26 days ago

Is it simply because they're not paying attention, or is it more that their attention is constantly being hijacked and manipulated?

appplication• 26 days ago

So the counterpoint to this is that we are collectively getting more news and more updates than ever before and we’re still in the situation of today.

I can’t argue with your premise because I agree, but the empirical data shows that if anything there is a positive correlation between accessibility of information and further descent into… whatever it is you’d describe is our modern situation.

It may not be causative but it’s also not really a sufficient counteracting force.

afavour5• 26 days ago

I don’t think we can examine these things in isolation. We do have more and more news available to us than ever before but:

a) there are more other things than ever before too. Used to be folks would watch the nightly news because there were only four channels or so to even watch. Now you have endless options.

b) the competition between all the news options means that more of them are leaning into opinionated content that you’ll either identify with on a tribal basis or get outraged by, because that gets more views. Informing the public is a secondary goal.

mattnewton2• 26 days ago

In the US, I think we are being intentionally DDOS-ed.

This strategy was laid out by Steve Bannon in the old frontline PBS interview where he called the media “the opposition party.”

“They’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time,” he said. “All we have to do is flood the zone. … Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never – will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

Also see Vance’s recent comments about how nobody would hold Nixon accountable for watergate if it happened today, it would be lost in the next news cycle.

EA-3167• 26 days ago

Nonetheless the comparison to smoking is downright silly. Smoking is notable for being one of the most lethal habits held by a large number of people, which offers few if any concrete benefits, persisting almost entirely because of the powerful addiction it engenders.

Paying attention to the news can be almost anything from pointlessly harmful, to entirely necessary. "The News" isn't just reading outrage coverage and politics, world events beyond the muttering of politicians and business leaders exists. There's also such a thing as curating and moderating your intake, as well as dealing with underlying issues. A lot of people who feel overwhelmed or made helpless by the problems in their lives take that energy and apply it to global problems instead, especially young people.

That's not the news being "toxic" like nicotine and smoke though, that the collision of emotional instability and reality.

dghlsakjg• 26 days ago

Not all information is equal.

If you read a wide spectrum of news sources with high standards (established non-tabloid newspapers and reputable long form publishers), I would be willing to bet that you are far better off (pick any metric) than someone spending the same amount of time with OAN/Fox/Daily Mail, etc.

This goes for someone anywhere on the political spectrum; I'm not just picking on the right. I would much rather live in a society of people that I don't necessarily agree with but that get their information from sources that value truth, than live with people of the same ideological bent, but only get their news from propaganda.

I can have a conversation with someone who thinks we're on the wrong side of the peak on the Laffer curve and wants to lower government spending. I can't have a conversation with someone that heard that immigrant run daycares are feeding pets to children and that we should cut daycare programs from the government budget.

kanbankaren2• 26 days ago

we’re still in the situation of today.

What situation are you talking about?

The world is less violent, more affluent than 30 years ago, but appears to be the opposite due to 24/7 news cycle.

eykanal• 26 days ago

As someone who is on a pretty strict news diet, this is exactly the wrong reaction. As it turns out, it's pretty easy to be informed about important thing without visiting any news websites.

* You can have direct email feeds about the things you find important.

* You can use RSS readers curated to your interests.

* You can listen to podcasts.

* You can—gasp!—talk to people around you who are more knowledgeable than you on these areas.

News websites make money of you visiting and staying on their site, so they give you stuff that will get you to come back. Their interests are almost certainly not aligned with yours.

If you define your own priorities, you can define for yourself what it means to pay attention and be informed, and then seek "news" specifically on those topics.

afavour5• 26 days ago

Why are podcasts exempt from the “they make money off you coming back” issue? They have the exact same motives.

Non profit news also doesn’t have the issues you’re describing. Sites like Propublica do incredible work.

The reality is that everyone has a perspective. That person you have a conversation with doesn’t necessarily have an unbiased opinion. They may have incentives if their own to convince you of something. That’s why a varied media diet is a better option.

cosmic_cheese• 26 days ago

I thought we had a nice balance in the 80s/90s. Very little of most peoples' days were tied up in the news cycle, with most only catching local/world news on TV in the evening and maybe reading the sunday newspaper.

Just enough to stay roughly informed, yet not drowning in it.

bee_rider• 26 days ago

I dunno. I feel strongly about national level politics but I haven’t turned this feeling into anything other than voting. The optimal amount of news for me might actually be just enough to know who to vote for which… isn’t much these days.

wookmaster• 26 days ago

I’m not sure I agree because it was used to manipulate people into where we are today. News quality is a real problem. So much of it’s been bought and corrupted.

kstenerud• 26 days ago

If you're consuming the news like you consume social media, then yes, you'll be affected like you are on social media. There are different kinds of news feeds that don't focus on trivial things like what outrageous things some president is doing.

joshuaheard• 26 days ago

I have been a news junkie ever since I switched from reading cereal boxes at breakfast to my dad's newspaper. I totally agree it's addicting. However, I don't know if I would say it's a negative addiction like smoking. I look forward to reading the news and seeing what's going on in the world outside my window. It's a challenge to come up with my own solutions to the world's problems. Now, with social media, I am even more rewarded by making my "solutions" public.

cschmidt• 26 days ago

It all depends on where you get your news. You need somewhere that puts things into context so you can understand why things are happening. Personally I really like the Economist. The weekly pace of publication also encourages analysis over “Trump puts tariffs on soybeans” headlines. News for smart people.

LastTrain• 26 days ago

Yes. Ignorance is bliss as they say.

mnls• 26 days ago

I’ll take it even further: I've stopped reading ANY kind of news. Yep, tech news too. And I've realized that I'm not missing anything important or anything that some colleague or friend won't tell me if it’s THAT important indeed. Occasionally I skim read HN and that’s it.

mattnewton2• 26 days ago

Yeah people are overdoing it, and not everyone is being motivated to do something by feeling mad, but maybe instead of throwing up your hands that you can’t care about soybean tariffs, you could try to educate yourself on tariffs and choose your political representatives based on whether or not they are doing a good job. Or read more narrow news. Completely shutting down the channel seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This kind of checking out / mass abdication and apathy seems really dangerous in a democracy.

neilv• 26 days ago

Different people need different messages around this.

For years, I read many online newspapers a day, as well as journalism trade publications. I also did a little low-key activism, during an earlier tech industry gold rush, when caring was less fashionable.

Today, I read almost zero news, and have set up filters on social media to block most references to the awful.

I have a pretty good idea about some very bad dynamics going on, but I can't do anything about them.

Were I to dwell on the very bad news, throughout each day, I wouldn't be able to do any small bits of good. Such as by contributing to a non-evil startup. Or trying to get sufficient resources that I can afford to share more.

Some people need to be told to take a step back, before they're destroyed by empathy and futile problem-solving. Other people need to be told to care more, or to be less self-centered. Other people need to be told not to be so incredibly awful, that they are ruining everything for everyone else.

I decided I'm in the first group, and hope to shift into an overly-comfortable second group, then fine-tune to somewhere between the two.

wesleyd• 26 days ago

There is a line in 30 rock "I don't know anything. I get all my news from the radio in Grand Theft Auto” and I aspire to this level of ignoring the “News”.

Even when I go coldest turkey, I’ve found that actually important news will find me, often in a way that makes it easier to judge for myself whether it’s good or bad.

johnea• 25 days ago

Typical millennial escapism.

Facing reality is so boomer...

Reading the news is the new smoking

Related Stories